At Nordstrom, the cloud is all about freeing up IT workers so they can focus on getting new apps and features into customers' hands instead of wasting time putting servers into racks.

"Before we were in the cloud, we had a shared services model with groups that maintained storage and databases" and the like, said Keith Homewood, an infrastructure engineer at the upscale fashion retailer. "When you had to do a production triage, you had to gather a cast of thousands.... By the time I was done, the customer forgot what they asked for or they got it somewhere else."

The need to eliminate the baggage that stood between him and his ability to react quickly to customer and business needs is a major part of the reason Homewood began moving Nordstrom into the cloud about a year and a half ago, after spending about six months making sure hosted services would offer acceptable levels of security and availability.